4 stars out of 4

Who needs Lord What's His Name when we have a newer, more interesting and much more personable villain - the dastardly Dolores Umbridge, a tyrant in pink who likes kitty cats, cups of tea and exerting an iron grip of control over Hogwarts and its best-known student, Harry Potter.

As portrayed with delicious, malevolent fussiness by Imelda Staunton, Umbridge provides something the Harry Potter films have been missing: A defiantly nasty villain who sticks around to challenge Harry and his allies, instead of popping in every once in a while in disguise or in a dream.

She provides a fine foil for Daniel Radcliffe's more muscular Harry Potter, who's getting more tormented, more determined and more compelling as he gets older. And that conflict helps make Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the best in the series, raising a high bar even higher. This fifth film is the darkest, the most exciting and the easiest to understand - or care about - for those with less than an encyclopedic knowledge of J.K. Rowling's fantastically popular world.

Credit much of its success to Michael Goldenberg's brilliantly economical script and to David Yates, a British TV-movie director who, in a bit of good news, is already working on the sixth film. Yates brings a leaner, less fussy approach to the story, with a more realistic feel, especially when the world of witches and wizards intersects with that of the Muggles.

Order of the Phoenix doesn't get bogged down in the interesting-but-so-what? details that have sometimes bogged down the earlier films. As entertainingly busy as they've been, the first four movies have often struck this non-Potter addict as a bit inconsequential - a lot happens, but the plot hardly advances.

Not here: This is fast moving and no nonsense. It's all plot, from the very first scene on. And it has some heft to it - it seems to matter, to be about something.

This is it, in brief: Umbridge is made the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts, but soon starts a totalitarian crackdown with a series of "Educational Edicts." They at first seem innocuous, focused on untucked shirts and the like, but as they turn more evil, Hogwarts begins to take on a gray, Stalinist chill.

These are no longer breezy school days, and there's no use looking for a rousing Quidditch match here.

Umbridge is part of a Ministry of Magic crackdown on Potter and Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon, world-weary and excellent again), who have dared claim that Harry's arch-rival Voldemort is back in town.

Harry is framed in the movie's first scene - a dark bit of horror that sets the tone for the whole film - and threatened with expulsion from Hogwarts. Dumbledore, as is his habit, saves Harry again. Still, the Ministry, through its fish-wrapper the Daily Prophet, tries to discredit the two: "Potter . . . Plotter?" "Dumbledore: Daft or Dangerous?" read the headlines.

Knowing that dark times lie ahead, though, Dumbledore and his allies in the Order of the Phoenix, an underground group sworn to fight against Voldemort, gather their forces. Meanwhile, back in Hogwarts, Harry forms a group of student freedom fighters called Dumbledore's Army, teaching them self-defense and preparing them for the battle that's sure to come.

The film moves with a sure touch from there on, with tragedy, noble sacrifice and much danger. There are lighter moments sprinkled here and there - including Harry's first kiss, which goes on longer than you might expect. Bravo! But the prevailing mood is appropriately dark, with a strong sense of dread, which is as it should be by this point in the story.

The returning stars are uniformly terrific (Emma Watson's Hermione Granger once again steals every scene she's in) even if some, as usual in this sprawling story, get only a moment here and there. The film gets some fresh blood with Evanna Lynch's likably loony Luna Lovegood and Helena Bonham Carter's thoroughly evil Bellatrix Lestrange. Meanwhile, Hagrid's big brother - and we mean big - and some ferocious centaurs add to the story's wow factor, even if the special effects that created them are a step or two below what we're used to.

For Potter fans, these are fine days indeed. They'll know what happens to Harry in just a few days, when Rowling reveals all - we trust - in the last book in her series. This should get them all the more eager to find out.

matt.soergel@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4082